You'd think that some topics are clichéd enough not to appear on an average adult's blog- things that everyone has pondered about at some point, given up and moved on.... but some event or the other in one's life keeps bringing the scary questions back just when you have ceased to ask them... Are our lives predetermined? Is free will an illusion? Are we puppets enacting a puppet show? If yes, who's pulling the strings?
There is a temple in Tamil Nadu, believed to contain palm leaf scrolls with inscriptions of people's lives in them. I had heard about this years back and didn't bother to give it much thought, but a friend's recent visit to this place brought back the fundamental questions. I was taken aback to hear that her date and time of birth was the only input to the "system", and a scroll was retrieved that contained certain very precise and unmistakable truths about her life so far and her personality. My reaction: "What information did they ask for when you called to make an appointment?", "May be they have access to government or municipality records or some such thing to track you down to find out where you live and what you do!" and all that blah... but wait! They didn't ask for *anything* when she made an appointment, and they read things from the scrolls, that no one can "find out somehow" - truths about her personality and specific health related facts! It was spooky! And then of course there were things about her life in the years to come, and as the natural human propensity for making inductive inferences would have it, you are inclined to believe that that might afterall be true as well, even if with a grain of salt (bag of salt???). But do they have scrolls for *everyone* in the world at all times? How's that possible? Well, they say that the place only contains scrolls of those who are destined to go there!
Assuming for a second that there exist certain ways to find out truths about the future, would their existence imply absence of free will? If I were to make a logical inference just based on the above, I would say "no"! And here's an analogy to explain why: Let's say you spot an ant scurrying, and you also notice a cube of sugar on its way, and you expect the ant to stop and have its fill. Would you say that your foreknowledge about the ant's action entails that the ant has no free will? No. Similarly, does someone's foreknowledge of your life imply that you possess no free will? No. This argument kept me satisfied for a few days; somehow it comforted me that precognition and free will are not mutually exclusive.
However, here's the twist. There is a statement that was not included in the above logical argument: you have foreknowledge of the ant's behavior because you are aware of certain laws of nature that cause an ant to want to eat sugar on its way. So perhaps the ant is merely bound by the laws of nature that were predetermined... in which case, does "free will" mean anything? If the whole universe works based on the idea of an initial state and a set of laws, is free will possible at all? This of course is the often discussed subject of "determinism and free will". Determinism may be defined as the theory that every event is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurances. So if we assume for a second that we have had past lives, and we existed in some form during the big bang, then we perhaps had free will only at the beginning of time (t=0). After that, our action then, combined with the laws of the universe, determined the next state, and transitively our current state! But that is just one of the arguable theories... And maybe the oracles do not rely on knowledge of any laws, but just rely on a certain power- overactive intuition perhaps, in which case the first argument and inference would still hold, and we still have free will.
Here's a small social detour. What would the implication of a large number of people, or everyone in the world, believing in determinism and absence of free will be? Would there exist no law makers, for, what meaning is there in punishing the thief that was destined to rob or the murderer that was destined to murder? Or would there exist law makers who believe that just as the thief was destined to rob, they, the law makers were destined to punish the thief?
In any case, the truth is independent of what we believe it to be... and the truth is.....? Who knows? Anyway, if this is indeed a puppet show, I am enjoying the puppet show! Are you?! :-p
14 comments:
wonderful essay.
Isaac Asimov has portrayed a world in his foundation series where determinism plays an important role in social (or atleast political) *motivation*.
The puppets know what the future is and they work and die to fulfill that future.
Good one yet again.
Physics tells us Determinism doesnt work too well in all domains.
I'd look at it this way: Irrespective of whether free will or determinism is "true", when one fails as a theory, turn to the other- like what all of science is about- since, beyond a point, it only makes sense to talk of human endeavours rather than "absolute truths" (if there is any such thing!)
Definitely made an interesting read. Post more.
haha! look at the philosopher talking of "human endeavours rather than absolute truths". ;-)
that's what we engineers do. we talk about human endeavours but write about absolute truths (or rather the quest) when we are bored on weekends. :-p
thanks to the philosopher for pointing out that "seized" should have been "ceased" in the first paragraph.
Oh whoever said all of philosophy is about "absolute truths"? :)
I didn't say that. :)
i'm curious to check out my nadi but ashwin won't let me. :)
also, to reply to your comment, i've had starting trouble lately (apart from being terribly busy at work). maybe i'll post a picture of the yummy dosai and chutney I made from last week. :P seriously, it was the best chutney i've ever made. :-)
I was going to respond to this by saying that an ant is a far simpler being than a human, therefore we can foresee its actions with a high degree of probability. It then occurred to me that humans could, in turn, be viewed as simple beings by a higher intelligence, thereby letting it predict our motions with a high probability of success. Maybe the question is not about complete determinism vs. complete non-determinism. What if all of astrology came with the clause "with a high degree of probability"? That would lead to a universe where free will and determinism (of a sort) can co-exist.
yeah, if both exist, that's the only way they could. By definition, determinism allows for no probability, or rather it's a model where the probability is always 0 or 1. What you describe is more like a Markov Model, which is the way I like to look at any situation....
And may be as you say, astrologers do have that caveat of "high probability" in any of their predictions, as opposed to certainty. Or may be what they predict is the subset of things where we have no choice, and there exist other things for which we have the will to choose...?
I did read about the nadi scrolls years ago and gave it as much thought as I gave the science around astrology. I have a simple take on it - there are people researching so many aspects of life in their own 'passionate' ways. I believe life is full of 'free will' choices. I love the last line of your info packed sharing - just enjoy the show! That says it all!
Hi Sumithra,
This is a late post, because you've pointed me towards your post only now. Instead of going into the more abstract issue of free will, I will at first restrict my attention to astrology and Agastya Naadi.
Astrology as it is practiced seems to have many gaping loopholes. Here are instances: According to the horoscope of Duryodhana of Mahabharat, he was supposed to have become a great king and rule for a very long time. He did rule for some time, but was not a great king. That was apparently because his choices were not in conformity with his destiny. Another example: Mahatma Gandhi had a very simple horoscope, with no indications of the fame and influence he would acquire later in his lifetime and even after.
Which goes to tell you that astrology as it is practiced doesn't tell you very much when the actual course of events is very often a combination of many factors, destiny and free will included. There is also the influence of the destiny and free will of other people over yours, and people to people interactions are not covered specifically in individual horoscopes. As far as astrology in the ideal case is concerned, it is my personal belief that it is a very intuitive science. Some of the greatest minds to have walked the earth since time immemorial, including Newton, have had a very abiding and deep interest in astrology. With Newton it made a lot of sense because he had spent a good deal of his formative years studying the regularity in the patterns of the universe through his (successful) efforts at constructing sundials. I happen to get this information from his biography. The connections between astrology and astronomy are well known. Astrology is such a deep science that it often fails miserably in the hands of people posing as astrologers who are in reality good rule-followers.
Now I come to the point about Agastya Naadi. I have been to this place in Bangalore where they have copies of the original scripts to get my reading. It is true that the only input is the thumb impression followed by a series of questions with single-bit answers, i.e. yes or no. Algorithmically, I would describe the process as follows: Your thumb impression or horoscope is the root of a binary tree, and your script is a leaf in some tree. Often, the trees do not return any leaf, so the naadi reader has to refer another tree (palm script). He does this until a tree is found, or gives up. A tree (palm script) is usually found. When I found my script, it mentioned my name, my father's name and my mother's name. It correctly told me in which year of my life I would be seeing my script. It also mentioned that I would have a degree related to Mathematics (true) and Computers (ture again). There was a slight difference in the horoscopes generated by the script and that found by my time of birth in regular astrology. I don't know which one to trust, but the agastya naadi one seems more accurate. Now, there is no system of astrology that can tell you your name or your parents' names. We had discussed this issue with a couple of enlightened people, and they told us that this thing is at a level beyond making predictions. If I understood them correctly, the use of Agastya Naadi to predict our future is something like the myth of the falling apple in Newton's life vulgarizing universal gravitation by reducing it to a bright idea. The purpose is apparently much more, to perform the remedies therein to calm the effects of past sins in this lifetime. Because we are not introspective enough, we do not realize the influence of our past karmas in our lives. Although many predictions made by the Naadi haven't come true for me, I don't think that is it's purpose in any case. The predictions are a choice (x_1,x_2,...,x_n) of events where x_i is a time series. Mathematically, I can explain this with two anologies: We know about inverses of functions. With sets, the concept of an inverse is much more general, and the inverse of a single element can be a set, something that is disallowed with functions having valid inverses. In our simplistic functional notion, predictions are a single vector element, whereas the (real) algebraic notion is one of a set of possible predictor vectors. The other example is about n-dimensional hypersurfaces. An n-dimensional hypersurface when projected onto a 3-dimensional geometrically viewable surface seems much more tangible. Similarly, predictions are a tangible form of a process that is much deeper than mere curiosity.
From my understanding, I believe that with free will, you can change whatever is predicted in astrology. Astrology fails most miserably in cases of people with exceptionally strong will power and capacity to persevere, which means that these aspects deserve more attention in astrology because of the skew that they can cause in predictability. I can cite many examples to support this claim: Mahatma Gandhi, Paramahamsa Yogananda, Paramahamsa Satyananda Saraswati, to name a few. Paramahamsa Yogananda's horoscope predicted that he would marry three times - he never married at all!! Paramahamsa Satyananda Saraswati's horoscope predicted that he would be a vagabond - he did roam all around the world, having visited each and every country in the globe, not as a vagabond, but as a yoga teacher and sannyasin!! Horoscopes can identify certain tendencies or traits in a person, but cannot predict at which level that trait would operate. In Swami Satyananda's horoscope, there is a precition of roaming about, but no indication of the level of consciousness at which the prediction would operate. The more evolved the person, the greater is the skew.
Finally, about free will. I really will not get into the debate about whether it exists or not. I have a simple concept in this regard - everything that happens to you happens as a result of choices, whether of the present, past or future. Destiny is nothing but an effect of past choices, so one has to operate within a certain set of limitations. It would be difficult for him to exercise his free will too much beyond the boundary imposed by his destiny. He could, if he chose to, but even the choice is decided by past choices. An illiterate person at 40 would find it very difficult to choose to become a professor. Similarly, the effect of past deeds can be so overwhelming that one's mind is not propelled to act in certain ways in spite of the ability being there in the individual to achieve great things. We all know this - it is true for all of us. Newton achieved what he did because he spent a great deal of his time at the Cambridge University library, whereas his classmates only sought a degree. They didn't choose to be extremely curious about the nature of things. Of course, there is the thing about Newton's absolute brilliance - there is this thing that talent is what a man possesses, but genius is what possesses a man.
The actual act of making a choice in real life is a result of many propensities. We choose to act on some, whilst we choose to ignore others. I think we need to look at the picture of free choice vs. propensities vs. determinism. I don't know if the Oracle in The Matrix is true when she says: "You've already made your choice Neo, you only need to understand it." It is true that our choices make or break us, but have we already made our choices? Will we understand them only when we actually get to execute them as time progresses? Perhaps Neo was supposed to have been a highly intuitive person in The Matrix, and so was blessed with these powers. Have any of you had intuitive glimpses into the future?
Hi Dev, that was a very interesting comment.
Astrology and its (arguably) being a science or pseudoscience is an oft-discussed topic in Philosophy of Science. The main problem with astrology is that it goes straight to prediction without getting into any cause-effect path or chain, as the case may be. So there is no visible hypothesis, and no visible reasoning and inference based on well-defined hypotheses. This makes its basis questionable. Another problem is with regards to falsifiability. At least where astrology of one's past lives is concerned, this is obviously a problem, because anything anyone tells you about your past life is *practically* neither verifiable nor falsifiable.
If the Oracle in the Matrix is right, for all practical purposes, we do not possess free will (in *this* life, or any life other than our very first perhaps), because we are already just a particle on a path of determinism where we are positioned where we ought to be and there could have been no other path we could've been on.
With regard to astrological predictions going wrong in some people's cases (you have cited examples like M.Gandhi and Yogananda), before making that conclusion, IMHO, it is important to ask the question of whether it is astrology that is incapable of being right 100% of the time, or whether there was an error in its application. Again, this takes us to the basic epistemological problem- astrology, unlike those disciplines of knowledge recognized as sciences, does not have well founded hypotheses or theories (proven by the extremely high error rate, if not anything else)- this makes it impossible to verify that a person has practised it correctly. The only thing one can do is check if predictions were right or not. The reason however, why it is important to take this into account, is that only if we know that the astrology was practised/applied correctly, the theory that individuals with immense will power can change their destiny, holds.
Going one step further, to ask the question of whether astrology was practised "correctly" be someone, there is an assumption that a "correct" method or practice is defined. This would mean that theoretically, Astrology is probably s Science, but practically, i.e., in its application, it is a Pseudo Science.
Things like Naadi confound me for the reason that in a field with a very high error rate, this one actually has a pretty good hit rate and a very high accuracy. Now how this ties to free will and whether or not free will exists, is something I don't want to get into again, since it's clearly a dead end street.
About whether I have had intuitive glimpses into the future, no, not really. But in my day to day decision making, many a time I have chosen something instictively, and it's been rewarding.
Thanks for directing me to this post Sumi. I keep hearing for Naadi Josyam too and I've been torn between wanting to try it and remaining in sweet ignorance :)
To me Astrology boils down to pattern matching, or as Dev mentioned "rule-following". And the rules are never simple :), they have conditional statements running 4 lines for every little "prediction". There are methods and scientific calculations that seem to go into determining the birth charts, but after that the predictions seem to be based on where the planets reside. And my guess is these rules came into place because of the similarity of events happening to those with similar charts. I've seen many people use astrology as their decision making tool, thus eventually "proving" astrology right by executing it's predictions.
I do believe that some of our psyches are over developed to be sensitive enough to pick up on details, leading to intuition. But even so predicting future states through intuitive tendencies suggest that some things are beyond one's control and it has been preset. Being intuitive one just picks up on them much earlier than the actual event.
Be it ants, animals, plants or humans, we all follow a routine and a pattern. Our actions and behaviors follow a standard cycle of routine since there is structure to the universe and we conform to it. Prediction is possible with anything that follows a pattern or a routine. But within that structure and routine we have quite a few choices. And as long as we have the "illusion" of desire and execution of actions as according to our will, that's good enough for now :)
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